Aspen meeting today with GG and Brad in a fireside chat / punch up - place your bets LOL

[HAL1000]

https://www.aspensecurityforum.org/

Brad Garlinghouse

@bgarlinghouse

Looking forward to discussing crypto’s momentum on Wednesday at the

@AspenSecurity

Forum. With clear frameworks and clear regulation, I have no doubt that this industry will flourish here in the US and globally.

Edited August 3, 2021 by HAL1000

[HAL1000]

I wonder if any funny handshakes, brown envelopes or future job offers might be going on

[Alluvial]

Gensler will be on CNBC on Tuesday, August 4 at 8:00 am ET.  I'm sure it will be the usual platitudes.  

[RipMcGillicuddy]

So Gensler is basically asking Congress for the framework that allows him to really attack exchanges and tokens he views as securities. And he makes it very clear that he views many as securities and believes most/all exchanges are guilty of selling unregistered securities. 

So basically, **** the American regulatory overlords. 

[Guest]

30 minutes ago, RipMcGillicuddy said:

So Gensler is basically asking Congress for the framework that allows him to really attack exchanges and tokens he views as securities. And he makes it very clear that he views many as securities and believes most/all exchanges are guilty of selling unregistered securities. 

So basically, **** the American regulatory overlords. 

I think too often we end up mixing up various challenges with crypto, especially in the U.S - Fairness, taxation, legal clarity, burdensome regulations, transparency, etc. To me, the most crucial aspect that needs to be resolved is transparency.

• Asset concentration. How much does any influencer stand to gain by bad-mouthing or pumping up specific tokens ? We have no idea. 
• How solvent really are some of the companies that offer lending products ? Celsius, BlockFi, Nexo, etc. We have no idea.
• What guarantee is there that when we spend a certain amount of USD or any other Fiat to get USDC/USDT that we are able to redeem it back for Fiat ? No idea.
• What are the risks involved in certain DeFi products ? No idea.
• Is an organization with a huge social media presence really that huge in the real world ? No idea. 
• Where is 100x leverage coming from ? Who are the guaranteers ? Where is the collateral coming from ? No idea.

The standard answer for everything has been - "crypto is high risk, high reward. no one guarantees anything and so if you put your own money, do your own research and it's your own fault if you lose money".

I don't think that attitude is scalable because it significantly limits the number of people who come in, the quality of people who participate in crypto, and also the amount of money people are willing to bring to the table. It also makes fraud super easy.

I think it would be nice to be able to classify crypto products into existing financial products that are well understood. We already have regulated loans, commodities, securities, mutual funds, and other markets. We know how taxation works for those markets.

What we need is to be able to build on top of those frameworks to allow for an asset class that behaves differently at different times.